There are dozens of countries around the world that have banned sex selection. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them. That makes the U.S. a destination spot for couples who want just the right number of girls and boys in their family.
The United Kingdom is one of those places where selecting the sex of your embryos in the IVF process is prohibited. The Daily Mail reports that more and more Brits are coming to America to “choose” the sex of their next child:
Increasing numbers of British parents are flying to the US for a controversial IVF treatment which allows them choose the sex of their baby, a leading expert has revealed.
Dr Daniel Potter, who runs the largest fertility clinic on the West Coast of America, has delivered 750 babies to UK mothers since he started in 1997.
Visits from UK women have risen by 20 per cent year on year to the IVF specialist, which allows them to choose the sex of their baby using a process currently banned in Britain.
Dr Potter says he sees around ten patients a month from the UK for his £7,600 treatment, with 80 per cent of potential parents opting for a girl and 20 per cent a boy.
Now let us be very clear about what fertility clinics like Dr. Potter’s are actually doing. They are not just making embryos of one sex. They are making a batch of embryos of both sexes and choosing to transfer only the ones of the desired sex. The others are likely discarded, donated to research to be ripped apart, or abandoned to wait for another couple to adopt them.
Here is one British mother gushing about how many embryos her IVF treatment created. She only wants a girl:
‘Of the eggs we created, we had six healthy embryos – three girls and three boys. I still can’t quite believe it, I’ll believe it when she’s here.”
So what about the boys? What will be their fate?
Children are not accessories to round out adults’ ideas of a “perfect” family. Children are gifts, not to be inspected, returned, or tossed aside.
It is time the United States joined the rest of the world and ban sex selection in both the IVF clinic and the abortion clinic. Whether couples want a boy or a girl, we cannot continue to be the destination of choice for this barbaric practice.
